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. 2022 May 13;17(5):e0266460.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266460. eCollection 2022.

Mobility evaluation by GPS tracking in a rural, low-income population in Cambodia

Anaïs Pepey  1 , Thomas Obadia  2   3 , Saorin Kim  1 , Siv Sovannaroth  4 , Ivo Mueller  5   6 , Benoit Witkowski  1 , Amélie Vantaux  1 , Marc Souris  7
Affiliations

Mobility evaluation by GPS tracking in a rural, low-income population in Cambodia

Anaïs Pepey et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is an effective tool for quantifying individuals' mobility patterns and can be used to understand their influence on infectious disease transmission. In Cambodia, mobility measurements have been limited to questionnaires, which are of limited efficacy in rural environments. In this study, we used GPS tracking to measure the daily mobility of Cambodian forest goers, a population at high risk of malaria, and developed a workflow adapted to local constraints to produce an optimal dataset representative of the participants' mobility. We provide a detailed assessment of the GPS tracking and analysis of the data, and highlight the associated difficulties to facilitate the implementation of similar studies in the future.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Devices distributed to the study population.
A: I-gotU GT600, distributed for rainy season (here worn on an individual’s ankle), B: Takachi waterproof enclosure containing the I-gotU GT600 distributed for dry season (here worn on an individual’s wrist). The waterproof enclosure was not yet used during rainy season because the devices were sold as “water-resistant” and were expected to be adapted to study conditions.
Fig 2
Fig 2. GPS tracks and total presence by cell from all participants during rainy season (Ntracks = 249, Nparticipants = 151).
Land use reprinted from [33] under a CC BY license, with permission from creators of the map A. Pepey et al, original copyright 2020.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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